


infinitely

by andthen (ohargos)



Category: Sunshine (2007)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:45:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohargos/pseuds/andthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The variations are infinite. Before the moment it happens, anything is possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	infinitely

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Scribewraith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribewraith/gifts).



There was a boy and he flew towards the sun, and the sun melted the beeswax and dirty sea gull feathers off the clumsy wings his father had tied to his arms. (Shouldn't he have known better?)

There was a spaceship named after the boy and it flew towards the sun, and the sun melted the pounding hearts and curved rib bones of the crew members who had once been dust. (Shouldn't they have known better?)

There was once a spaceship named after the ship named after the boy and it flew towards the sun, and the sun melted at its touch and exhaled light. (Wasn't it inevitable, that one day this should happen?)

\--

Capa loves his numbers well. They have a definite, sharp beauty that rarely shows in nature, but which he can still find there, carefully concealed, in places like flower petals (the Fibonacci sequence) or snowflakes (Koch and Kepler). He likes this kind of symmetry, the charm in order. He likes their endlessness, their riddles and the answers that follow at the end.

When he was a boy, he knew the number of steps it took to get home from school, or the convenience store, or the sports field. Still he would sometimes sneak to the roof and lie on his back, looking at the sky and finding everything wonderful and incomprehensible and utterly strange.

Capa loves his numbers well. He watches the payload plummet towards the surface of the sun on the white wall of Icarus II, and instead of recalling the sudden loss of gravity in his dreams, the heat of the nearing fire, the stickiness of beeswax on his arms, he sees the beautiful arch of the payload, made out of numbers. He watches this, until the numbers burst, multiply until they are everywhere (like he dreams the light will, once they succeed), and the arch disappears and everything is light.

There is a heaviness in the pit of his belly, because they are asking him to play god, asking something the numbers don't wish to reveal. He feels like a little boy who has suddenly been told that his father the king is dead and this is his kingdom now, when he has barely grown used to being the make-believe prince with his wooden sword.

Kaneda is standing in the doorway and his tangible figure reminds Capa that this is really happening. They left their planet and they are floating in space. (Each one of them has to remind themselves of this at regular intervals.) It is difficult to remember that when all he remembers about leaving is the way the weight of the spacesuit made his shoulders ache and suddenly realising he should have drunk more water. What makes it worse here is how light life seems to be sometimes. There are Corazon's lush bright forests and all the cool corridors. It's easy to forget the night of the space outside. It seems like they are floating in mid-air, right before the nearing, unavoidable crash. (There are times when Capa is grateful of how he and Mace keep colliding, first spiteful words, and then fists. The taste of iron in his mouth makes him remember that he is still here. He can't stand those stupid conflicts and he welcomes them; it's easier to fly into a sail of a ship or a seabird than just wait for the feathers on your arms float off, one by one, and wait to be reclaimed by gravity.)

Kaneda demands an answer and he is wearing a bracelet of wooden pearls and one of his buttons is unbuttoned. They are really here. Capa chooses.

(Secretly he lets the thought of space and time melting into each other make him dizzy. The idea of every universe that is as possible as the one that is realised, the moment before.)

\--

Mace has thought this through. Sometimes he thinks about going back. He remembers the wet, grey snowslush slipping under the wheels of his bike, the wind biting at his cheeks. He thinks of other things, too, high mountain roads and sitting in dark of a cinema with his girlfriend's hand on his thigh. He thinks about going back and the idea makes him feel vaguely nauseous. (Sometimes his mind had slipped to the constant night of space, and the antagonist's gunshots startled him awake, but he never saw who died, only the blood dripping underneath the floorboards.)

He has thought this through. He thinks they will probably die, and that's alright. He wouldn't want to die, though. He attempts to imagine futures, but all he can think of is the nuclear bomb they carry, the heart of a star. He sees the bright skies and all the lives that will come. It's as much of a future as he can imagine. (Is he there? He couldn't tell.)

Often Mace hates the spaceship, its small rooms, the cold walls, the way everyone's steps echo, the door that can't be opened. (He hates and loves the Earth Room, because he wishes he could live there, have the Earth like that.) He hates the way everything seems to condensate here, every small annoyance becoming a major bother, every word growing leaden. He used to go running or take his bike out when things got too heavy to handle.

Sometimes he is happy that Capa (who seems like he was the quiet kid at school, the quiet _scary_ one you glanced at and left in peace, just in case) is as quick to snap as he. Everyone else has grown almost accustomed to their brawls, and depending on how much time he has spent watching the sun, Searle either shakes his head softly as he cleans up the angryred cuts (sharp doorpanes, too-long nails) or a slight smile crosses his lips (_boys will be--_).

Capa makes Mace feel uneasy, those clouded blue eyes and the way they seem to keep bumping into each other, even when they mostly try to stay out of each other's way. Occasionally Mace smiles at his reddened knuckles and slowly blooming bruises. It's a half-cruel grin. He feels lighter. Of course it's just about adrenaline. (That's what he tells himself, anyhow.)

Mace has figured this out. Now that they no longer discuss what they'll do afterwards, he feels easier.

\--

_Variables infinite. Accuracy unknown._

Icarus's voice is crystalline, an echo of Corazon's glass-walled gardens.

Anything can happen.

This is really happening.

It could have been anything else.

Before Capa turns to Kaneda and makes his decision, he feels light-headed. (A piece of space junk hits them. Mace stumbles and breathes out a curse.) The clarity of Icarus's computer voice: _Variables infinite_.

Anything at all.

\--

One of the following things (may) happen(s):

1\. Capa makes the wrong decision, Trey forgets something, they all die and save the world.  
2\. Capa makes the wrong decision, Trey forgets something, and one day they awaken to see--

\--

_Variables infinite_, says Icarus.

Variation 1:

In the end, Mace gasps into the phone and hopes, hopes, hopes. (He has held onto hope for heavenly bodies and nations, but to have hope for one simple man--) Something stings in Capa's eyes. _It's cold_, Mace thinks, _it's cold_. (His toes would have to be amputated, did he live.)

"Capa--"

He hopes until he stops hoping, until he... stops. (He never really liked the cold. His last breath is a cloud of steam.)

Capa flies into the sun. It burns away his beeswax wings and envelopes him in its brilliance.

Everyone else lives.

\--

_Variables infinite_, whispers Icarus.

Variation 2:

In Icarus I, they all try to shake off the sense of this being a time paradox, of this being them.

Harvey tries to not think of the way new lush forests sprout from the ashes of old ones.

Searle tries to not think of how he sometimes hopes they could all just see the sun, before they are forced to turn away. (He could hear Kaneda breathing and wished he had been there instead. Or there with him, at least. To finally see everything.)

Mace tries to not think of their ghost messages never reaching their destination.

Capa tries to not think of how small they are, the six of them, how easily they break.

It feels like they have come back as ghosts. (No one says this out loud.)

\--

Then it all goes to hell (it was clear they'd have to crash, eventually) and the spacesuit is a heavy weight on Capa's shoulders, but he barely notices it. It is the weight of the responsibility, the weight of being the highest priority. (In other words, he will be the last one to die. The one who should turn out the lights. He supposes he has known this for a long time.) It's something like gravity.

He accepts it. It's too late anyhow.

Everything seems to echo this, _it's too late_. What happens from now on is inevitable. (_Infinite variables_, but this Icarus has quietened and no one will remind them.) No one protests when Searle says he will stay. It's only a matter of time.

There is a heart of a star and Capa is responsible for it. That is why the heavy golden suit weighs on his shoulders, why Mace (without a spacesuit, his skin already in goosebumps) carefully closes the clasps even though his bruises are still tender.

Harvey tries to fight his fate, but even that seems like a battle lost already. They all know how this will end. They are but the old crew's ghosts and they have one hope, one radiating, dangerous, theoretical hope.

This all is clear. (_Infinite variables_, Icarus would argue.) That is why Capa could not tell why things go the way they do.

The seals of the door are broken. Harvey and Mace are holding onto Capa's arms, the clumsy golden spacesuit arms, with their frighteningly bare fingers, and they are all flying, flying across a freezing, endless night. They are in the space between the two spaceships and for a moment, Mace almost feels like laughing at the foolishness of the hope that this could ever work. Then Harvey's fingers slip. Mace's tighten.

Capa feels lighter. Harvey is floating on his own, slower now, and his heart stills in the cold. (Capa feels lighter, his heart grows heavier.)

They will all die. This much they know. One hope exists. A heart transplant for a dying star. Capa cannot tell why things go the way they do. It is not the way they are supposed to go, that much he knows, and yet they do, and somehow it seems inevitable. (It isn't.)

The variables are infinite and this is what happens:

Capa's hand grips the doorway of Icarus II, and he reaches out for Mace, who has almost given in to zero gravity, accepted the fact that he has a tendency of holding on to impossible hopes.

For a moment, Capa grips the doorway and a strip of the foil Mace has wrapped around himself, pulling him back to the ship's sphere. (Harvey is somewhere above them, but he is no longer afraid.)

Then the weight of the spacesuit and his own struggle and Mace grow too great. He has to decide. His body has to decide. Something will be lost.

_Infinite variables._

Capa lets go of Icarus II. (Even at that very moment, he couldn't tell you why. He'd blame it on the clumsy spacesuit fingers, the straining muscles, but he couldn't tell you _why_.)

He is gripping the foil that barely protects Mace from the cold and they are losing their gravity.

The variables are infinite. There is a black hole.

\--

Mace has frost-bitten cheeks and three of his fingers have become black and hard. Capa has trouble with accepting the facts because they disagree with the laws of physics.

_Infinite variables_, Icarus breathed. Capa never really comprehended the word 'infinite'. (He thought he did, but no.)

This is what happens. Their spaceship floats away from them (_I think my spaceship knows which way to go_) and they all know they will die.

The sun burns through Searle's retinas, and then his lungs burst into flames. The cold crystallises Harvey's cells and his heart shatters.

Capa holds onto the spaceship and Mace. Then he holds onto Mace and Icarus II disappears from sight, and so do Harvey's fragile body and the ghost ship called Icarus I.

There is a black hole. (This is a theory. Not a very good one, Capa would have to admit that.)

This is where Capa doesn't want to continue the story, because it goes against everything he has ever known, and Mace gives him a sharp look, and would push him until he'd snap, if only he had two good hands. Because it was Capa who _let go_. It was he whose hand slipped, he who held onto Mace's make-shift cover from the cold, held onto Mace and not Icarus because of some stupid mistake. Mace knows that had Capa not done this, he himself would have drifted away like Harvey did, and the temperature would have stolen the breath from his lungs. (It would have crept up his trapped legs and into his chest.) Even so, he cannot forgive Capa. Or perhaps, because of that, he cannot forgive him. Because now they are both here, and Icarus and the payload and everyone else are-- This is where he stops thinking, because it's a heavy, haunting thought. He always thought their failure would come with the scorching heat of the sun or the overwhelming ice of space. Not this way, not with the two of them floating away from everyone and everything.

(From then on, Mace never stops wondering about the (lost) nuclear transplant heart and the snow-covered palm trees in Florida. He hopes and doesn't dare to believe.)

But the variables are infinite, and this is what happens:

There is (in theory) a black hole and then there is (probably) a planet. This is what it seems like: Mace and Capa find themselves on a new planet with a blue sky and a nearby star that isn't fading, a planet with water and wild waves and strange plants; knee-high oak trees and forget-me-nots the size of a football. There is this place, with sunlight and a sea, and Mace is there, and Capa.

"Are we dead?" is the first thing Capa says, the first thing either one of them says.

Mace's fingers have turned hard and black and they ache to the bone, like the cold has buried itself there, and he wants to think that death isn't like that, but doesn't say anything. (It could be. It shouldn't, but it might.)

"It must have been a black hole," Capa says next. (There's a long while between these two sentences.)

Then, "That makes no sense."

And later, "None of this makes any sense. This can't be happening."

And the next time he is about to open his mouth, Mace says, "Well, tough luck, because we're stuck here now, whether it makes any fucking sense or not. I couldn't care less if it makes no sense." and the words feel poisonous, because _this is actually happening_.

It's a planet. It's a planet with a living sun and an atmosphere they can breathe and it's against all laws of physics, all logic. They walk, they are breathing, Mace's fingers hurt, Capa draws numbers in the sand and the water licks them away.

Capa keeps drawing his numbers and figures, as if he can't bear to look at the place until he has it all figured out. Mace grows frustrated, his body aches. (Briefly he wishes for the narrow corridors of Icarus, the unavoidable collisions, fists and teeth. He longs for the release, the excitement and the adrenaline, the purity of physical action and reaction. But Capa looks at him with clouded eyes and makes a hundred questions to himself.) He goes off on long walks, to explore. It is a quiet planet with wild life that startles at his strange steps. It is utterly foreign and painfully familiar. He is looking for signs, for half-buried spaceship parts or ruins of ancient civilizations. There is nothing like that here. (Briefly he thinks of the Earth before humans. He is glad he knows too little about black holes or anomalies in the space time continuum to come up with any theories.)

For several days, they don't speak. Mace sees Capa's hunched figure by the shore and turns his back. He'll rather have the screeching birds and poison vines than the feverish look of Capa's blue eyes and his stupid need to make sense of such things. Mace doesn't want to think about it, doesn't want it to become any more real than it already is.

There is nothing left. Icarus II may be somewhere or it may be gone. Their sun may have flickered out or burst back into flames. It is possible they died. Or that they lived.

When Capa was a boy, he lay on the roof and marvelled at the wonderful, utterly strange world.

When Mace tried to imagine his life, he could see the world and floods of people and not himself.

One night Capa is sitting at his usual spot and his finger stops in the sand and a large wave washes away his numbers. And he stops. He stops looking for a why and a how. It is an infinite universe with infinite reasons. (There is a faint echo in the back of his mind, something said in Icarus's clear, gentle computer voice, but he cannot quite catch the words.) He thinks this to himself and doesn't quite comprehend it, but it's alright. He looks at the sea for the first time. The light is starting to fade. He vaguely remembers going to the beach when he was a child. He was a poor swimmer and got cold easily. He liked it anyway. Then the seas grew cold and then they were frozen over for most of the year. The warm ripples tickle his feet. Capa watches the sea and thinks of a spaceship that is now a distant impossible dream, like flying to the sun with beeswax wings and not getting burnt.

He doesn't hear Mace's quiet steps on the sand. When he appears in the corner of his eye, Capa glances at him briefly. Mace is watching the glowing horizon and doesn't say anything. Instead he sits on the sand next to Capa, not too close, but close enough for there to be a sudden wave of relief. It is an echo of the ancient song of human longing. It's a call to a dance where each step brings you closer together, closer and closer until you remember what it was like to be a single cell, nothing but the possibility of infinite variations. And this is the result; they are alone here now. They were alone in space, hanging onto each other with all their strength, in the heart of an infinite universe. They couldn't quite tell you why. It is all a very exceptional coincidence. (Everything is, for it could have all been something else just as easily.)

Mace looks at his frost-bitten fingers and the fading bruise on his arm and maybe he glances at Capa. "I think we can live here," he says.

It's hesitant and it hurts a little to say that. The word 'we' has a strange weight to it. Mace isn't quite sure what he means, and Capa doesn't reply. Maybe he smiles slightly, pressing his palm against the warm sand, or maybe it's just a trick of light. Then they watch the night fall all around.

Looking up at the sky, they see something like a falling star. Or perhaps it is a spaceship. Or a boy with beeswax wings. The possibilities are infinite.


End file.
